A former collegiate athlete's journey of trying to stay and get as fit as possible in life after soccer!

Category Archives: giveaway

Recently I was contacted by Naked® Juice Coconut Water to do a blind taste-testing of their coconut water side-by-side with a real coconut. They sent me two coconuts and two Naked Coconut Waters to do the comparison. This was obviously super exciting for me, because I am a big fan of coconut water.

First, let me tell you a little about Naked® Juice Coconut Water. It contains one whole coconut in each 11.2oz bottle, has 650 mg potassium, 65mg calcium, and 23mg magnesium. It’s great for hydrating after a tough workout or a long run, which is my personal favorite use for it! Check out the nutrition stats below:

For comparison’s sake, here is the nutritional info that I found for real coconuts from FitDay.com:

As you can see, it’s pretty similar.

And as I was about to find out, so is the taste.

The challenge, titled “Closest to the Coconut”, puts me to the test to see in a side-by-side blind taste-test, if I can tell the difference between the young green coconuts and the Naked Coconut Water.

So you’re all aware, I’ve never tried Naked Coconut Water in the past and I’ve never had coconut water straight from a coconut, so going into it I didn’t know what either tasted like. With Mike’s help, I conducted the test. Mike opened the real coconuts and the coconut water and poured them into two mugs. He did this while I was out of the room so I did not see which was going into what mug. When he was ready, he called me back into the kitchen to do the taste-testing.

I tasted one at a time and thought hard about the taste and how I liked it.

What I discovered, however, is that I liked them both, and had no idea which was which. The tastes were very similar but one was slightly sweeter, which isn’t a good or a bad thing, it’s just a little different. It was the only difference I could detect. Both had great coconut flavor and a smooth, refreshing taste.

So which was which?

The slightly sweeter of the two ended up being the water from the real coconuts. But like I said, it was only a small difference in taste and it really could have gone either way. The Naked brand of coconut water tasted extremely similar to the water that comes straight from the real coconuts, and that impressed me. An obvious bonus to choosing Naked coconut water over a real coconut? The packaging! Let me tell you, it’s a LOT easier to open a Naked coconut water than it is to open a real coconut!

So what I found out is that I love both and that Naked is super “Close to the Coconut” in terms of flavor! Naked does a really great job replicating real coconut water, it’s flavor, and it’s healthy benefits.

So now it’s your turn.

Are you interested in conducting your own taste-test of Naked Coconut Water versus water from real coconuts?

One BBF reader will be selected at random to participate in their own side by side blind taste-test of Naked coconut water. The winner will be sent the same package I received, and then write a post on it similar to this one about their experience! *NOTE: It is required that the person selected for this taste-test write a guest blog post on my blog about their experience. You do NOT have to have your own blog to be eligible because the post will go on bessbefit.com. If you do not want to write a post about your experience, DO NOT enter this giveaway.

That being said, here’s how to enter! All you have to do is leave me a single comment saying that you would be interested in the taste-test and that you would be willing to write a guest post about it. That’s it!

The winner will be selected on Sunday. Good luck!

Naked Coconut Water sent me the items to be reviewed and will provide the giveaway materials. They compensated me for this campaign. All opinions are my own.

I love flip flops. I wear them all the time. They’re just so easy and comfortable that it would be hard for me not to like them. So you can understand that I was pretty excited when Havaianas Sandals contacted me to do a product review and host a giveaway! I immediately went to their website to check out the goods, and once I was told to pick out a pair that I wanted to try, I was overwhelmed with the hard decision of only picking one pair. There are so many amazing and cute ones, how could I ever choose?

After narrowing it down to my two favorites, Slim Fashion in White and Slim Hardware in Black, only one thing was able to sway me more in one direction. That one thing? Skulls. I’m totally into the skull trend right now and got pretty excited to see these flippy floppies!

Please please please forgive the following pictures of my feet. Give me a break, I’ve been marathon training for about five months now (holy crap) and my feet are not in their finest shape. As a retired soccer player, that’s saying something. I honestly thought about skipping the feet pics, but how else can I properly show off the sandal fashion that is Havaianas?

You can read about the sandals, their history, and their creation here. It’s a pretty cool little timetable.

I’ll be honest, at first the thong of the sandal was a little uncomfortable. But I made the effort to wear them whenever I had the chance, knowing that they likely only needed some breaking in. I think I was right..they seem much more comfortable after only a week of wear than the first time. That’s probably to be expected with any shoe! It only took a few times wearing them around to places like the grocery store (where I received compliments!) and running other errands for them to feel like they had formed closer to my feet. I really like the sole of the sandals, it’s squishy and comfy but still supportive.

3. Tweet the following: “I’d like to win a pair of @havaianas sandals from @bessharrington! http://wp.me/p108Ct-2Tv”

Also, It’s not an entry, but you can also like the Havaianas USA Facebook page to stay up to date on their activities and information! Good luck!! I will announce the winner on Tuesday, September 25th!